Chemnitz Museum Night 2014: Invitation to the 15th nocturnal discovery tour on Saturday, 3 May from 6 pm
This year's special offer is the late Gothic collegiate church of Ebersdorf with its important art treasures
Chemnitz museums, associations, galleries and institutions are getting ready for the first Saturday in May: invitations are being sent out for the Chemnitz Museum Night 2014 on 3 May from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m., making it the 15th time that the night-time discovery tour has taken place. Regardless of whether you plan your tour in the city centre, in Ebersdorf or on the Museum Mile along Zwickauer Straße: exciting exhibitions and a wide range of offers and activities await visitors, children and adults alike, at each of the 29 locations.
This year's "Special Offer" takes visitors to the Museum Night to the Ebersdorf Collegiate Church: Under the motto "Mysterious and marvellous things behind old church walls", special insights into the history of the famous building will be provided, as there are many stories surrounding the late Gothic church built in 1400.The late Gothic church, built in 1400 and home to important art treasures such as the winged altar from 1513, works by the painter Hans Hesse and two life-size pulpit figures from Hans Witten's workshop, is surrounded by fascinating stories and legends.
After visiting the collegiate church, you can - once on tour in Ebersdorf - take a look at the school museum and let a real descendant of the famous arithmetician Adam Ries introduce you to the secrets of "calculating on the lines". The smallest museum in Chemnitz - the Ebersdorf Museum Storage -, the permanent exhibition "Flak Barracks Ebersdorf" - still an insider tip - and the Saxon Railway Museum can also be explored in the Ebersdorf district on Museum Night. On the way back to the city centre, for example, it is worth stopping at the "Window into Earth History" on Glockenstraße, where the excavation team from the Museum of Natural History literally provides deep insights into their work.
Speaking of the Museum of Natural History: Night owls out and about in Chemnitz city centre can find out more about the love lives of animals at the Museum of Natural History in Haus TIETZ under the motto "1 + 1 = SEX", which incidentally also includes important beauty tips. International art and performances can be experienced in the Neue Sächsische Galerie, in the project space of the Chemnitz Artists' Association, in the artECK gallery and in the Weltecho. City writers and reporters get to the bottom of unusual "stories from the treasury" in the city archive.
Anyone interested in an unusual outdoor event should take a night-time art walk in the Heckert area in the footsteps of the Gedon family of royal Bavarian court sculptors. The Museum Night programme at the Schloßbergmuseum includes 16th century courtly culture, contemporary museum work and dementia therapy through artistic activity, as shown in the current exhibition. The newly built Fleugel organ can be heard next door in the castle church. On Theatre Square, in addition to visiting the art collections and the special exhibitions on show here, it is also worth making a detour to St. Peter's Church, opposite the König-Albert-Museum, and a few steps further to the gallery of the Laterne art association, whose members also show works on the open-air grounds of the Schönherrfabrik.
If you decide to take a tour along the Museum Mile on Zwickauer Straße, you can expect an exciting mix of art, vehicle and industrial history: the expressionist Jawlensky and the aesthetics of the Bauhaus are presented in a visual and theatrical way in the Gunzenhauser Museum. At the Museum of Saxon Vehicles, the programme revolves around the current special exhibition "Motorboats - Boat Engines. Water sports in the East". In the Chemnitz Industrial Museum, the history of the German labour movement is presented in a vivid and varied way. In a second special exhibition, "SEILschaften" (ropeways) report on 140 years of transport technology. The Chemnitz Tram Museum provides information on the subject of "Trams in wartime".
On the tour towards Saxony's smallest castle, Rabenstein Castle, the focus is on the Chemnitz Bauhaus artist Marianne Brandt at the Villa Esche site. The German Games Museum organises hands-on activities and games tournaments around its games exhibitions. The Stasi Records Authority will be revealing background information about the state security at Wismut under the motto "Surveilled in the Shaft", and contemporary witnesses, exhibitions and films at the former prison on the Kaßberg will also be reporting on the machinations of the Stasi.
The young public can look forward to many activities and hands-on offers, e.g. guided tours by children for children (Gunzenhauser Museum) and creative design with wire (Neue Sächsische Galerie), colour (Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz), plants (Schloßbergmuseum) or needle and thread (Ebersdorfer Museumsspeicher).
CVAG shuttle service - conveniently on tour by bus and train: All tour stops of the Chemnitz Museum Night 2014 can be easily reached with the CVAG shuttle lines. The admission ticket for the Museum Night is also valid as a travel ticket.
Museum Night tickets for adults at a price of eight euros each and youth tickets for three euros each (also valid for concessions) have been on sale in advance since mid-April and at the box offices of the museums and institutions. Admission is free for children up to the age of 14.
Programme to take away: The programme for Chemnitz Museum Night 2014 is available free of charge as a handy brochure to take away from the City of Chemnitz information desks and is published online on the city website at www.chemnitz.de.
Contact: Cultural Office of the City of Chemnitz, call 0371/488-4125.